p3p.xml

How many if you are using it?

[Krapulator]

I've seen a dramatic increase in 404 requests for this file in the last month or so. I'm just wondering how important it is, and how many of you out there have set one up.

[grahamstewart]

I do.

Your probably seeing a lot of requests for it because IE6 has Privacy/Cookie options that are directly controlled by your P3P policy.

If you don't have a P3P policy and use compact policy headers then you'll probably find that a lot of your cookies are being rejected.

See the W3c P3P section [w3.org] for details.

A good policy generator tool makes implementation a bit easier.
I use the IBM PolicyEditor [alphaworks.ibm.com] which is free.

[SEO practioner]

Thanks Graham, but do you happen to know any percentage of users that actually call for it? Is it worth the trouble?

[grahamstewart]

Sorry, I don't have got good stats for it because I haven't got it implemented on any of my commercial sites yet. Just my on-going projects and personal sites.

I would have thought quite a few though. Privacy is becoming an increasing public concern and IE6 has a View->Privacy Report.. option that requests the xml file and produces a readable summary of it.

I'd say its definitely worth the trouble if you use cookies - because it greatly increases the chances they will be accepted.

[Krapulator]

Interesting!

I am curious about this little bloke called p3p.xml.

I decided to check on some of the bigger players in the internet world and out of all the sites that I checked, I only found two who have implemented this file, which is MSN (no surprise there) and Yahoo.

No one else seems to use it.

[Dreamquick]

If you have a look here there's a list of sites which say they are using P3P (it wont be an exhaustive list but will cover a lot of early implementors);

www.w3.org/P3P/

There are a few big names but mostly they are smaller sites, plus as the page becomes more well known it's also starting to attract spamy links (IMO).

- Tony

[grahamstewart]

I decided to check on some of the bigger players in the internet world..

The thing is... the big players can afford not to have a proper privacy policy as most users will be happy to override their privacy settings on a per-site basis for the big, well-known names.

It's the same situation as ActiveX/browser extensions - I'm a lot happier installing an extension from a company I know (like the Microsoft Update extension or Macromedia Flash) than I am installing one from Joe Bloggs Plumbing Supplies plc. :)

[Krapulator]

Well then I think I will start composing my comprehensive privacy policy xml document.

This should be fun.

Not

[graywolf]

I had a bit of trouble witht his when I tried to do it. The validator at eh W3C was pretty helpful

[w3.org...]